Pre-build season activities

[Kyle]

MOE meets once a week on Monday nights from September until Kickoff with breaks for holidays and stuff with other events on weekends and other week day's sprinkled in sometimes.
During the weekly meetings the students work on team building exercises learning safety practices and proper use of the tools and machines and also basic engineering, design and FIRST principles so that when the kick off occurs our students are ready for the challenge ahead.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

We have:

*1 meeting a week (except over breaks) = 16 hrs.
*8-10 build sessions to construct a prototype chassis (Which is built by the new people to train them) = 32-40 hrs.

Total = aprox 50 hrs.

Originally Posted by Phil Mack

Of the activities that you do, which do you find most valuable in the pre-season? What would you add if you had more time?

Designing and building a chassis prior to competition is a HUGE advantage. For one thing, there is no time limit and you can work as long as you want on it. It can be used to train new members on machine tools - while allowing them to actually assemble something useful. After its mechanically complete, it can be used as a prototype base for the 2008 season and latter as a practice bot (once the real one is shipped). It'll also give those programmers something to do

If we had more time I would definitely train more people in CAD.

[Cooley744]

Our whole team is never together at one point in time. Not even for competitions. Well, maybe for the kickoff/season game introduction, but even so, someone is always missing.

[StephLee]

1629 doesn't stop meeting at any point, so I'm not entirely sure what the right answer would be. We spent a significant amount of time working on the '07 bot over the summer, making modifications and doing re-designs, but we also spent a lot of time on summer camps and other activities. We've met twice a month at the very least since the end of last season, and we're planning on holding a few "crash course" meetings for safe tool operation. I can't be sure how much time we'll spend just on that since this is the first year we're holding meetings just for that purpose, but I put 100+ hours because of all the time we spent over the summer.

[Dan Petrovic]

It's less than 10 hours a week for any given person, but for the team as a whole, once the training starts up, there is something going on every night and sometimes concurrent with anotherthing. It could get up to a total of 20 hours a week for the entire team.

Last week I spent about 7 hours involved with FIRST things. Two meetings for getting the rookies' hands dirty with Vex and one meeting for getting rookies familiar with the controls of our robot for River Rage.

Training is a very good thing. You don't want to take the time to train people during build season when you can do it prior to build season. It doesn't allow for much free time until March of next year, but everyone benefits from it.

Edit: I voted less than 10 for me individually while it should have easily been over 100 hours from now until Kickoff for the whole team. I didn't read the question carefully...

[Chief Pride]

actually, most of our team still meets every day! o.O

[T3_1565]

our team meets twice a week on tuesdays and thursday. We started on the week after school started. We are busy training people on the do's and don'ts of FIRST and prototyping some wicked design plans for everything!!

[Alan Anderson]

The TechnoKats have had team meetings once a week since school began. We've also had some extra shop cleanup days and robot drive practice sessions, a late-night bonfire party, and a very long day at the Autumn Robotics Competition. Our upcoming plans for the next few months include holding software training sessions, refurbishing our practice field, doing the annual overhaul of our New Year's drop ball, going to a corn maze, rearranging the shop space to accommodate a new mill, etc. I expect we'll set some specific project plans at our meeting this afternoon.

[synth3tk]

Heh, our team is really small, and the mentality shows. No one wanted to do anything outside of FIRST season even after I offered to take care of organizing the events and activities. The teacher did just start a robotics class this school year, so we're hoping that more students show interest, then maybe we'll start doing off-season stuff.

[T3_1565]

Originally Posted by blakcheez

Heh, our team is really small, and the mentality shows. No one wanted to do anything outside of FIRST season even after I offered to take care of organizing the events and activities. The teacher did just start a robotics class this school year, so we're hoping that more students show interest, then maybe we'll start doing off-season stuff.

haha us too! We have meetings, but that doesn't mean we get much done in that time. I have actually found this year that all of our new guys/girls are showing much more interest and attention to what is being shown that in pervious years

Horray for us!

[synth3tk]

ROFL!!! That's good to hear! I've got like this whole dream team in my mind. Course it's also about other people too. I guess, since it's this whole "team" effort kinda thing. But I feel that we can be a better team than we were. Still had fun though, can't deny that.

[T3_1565]

oh yeah it is loads of fun. And I always find that people get hooked after they complain about the fact there are so many meetings and blah blah, and "I wasted my weekend" etc etc. when we are done competing people are always like "OHHHHH This is a Robotics competition!!! This is sweet!! let's build EVERYTHING!!!" which ends up being too late lol.

Thankfully as I said, the rookies are showing some spirit this time around! Without the mindblowing experience of a FIRST competition.

[Pavan Dave]

*Sorry I voted wrong. -- I understood the question as "How many hours a week/day on average does your team meet?"

We spend sessions of three to four hours (aproximately six) to learn FLL and get familiar with the LEGO kits. Aftewards we mentor FLL teams and help out, host, and run, the BEST tournament and the FLL tournament.

On an average week a student spends between 5-15 hours depending on the requirements for elementary school they are mentoring but sometimes more or less depending on if we are working robotics tournaments.

We don't do much FRC work until January though.